As almost all parents will appreciate, young children seem to have a fascination for playing with telephones which often results in the handset of the phone being removed so that the phone is in effect in a constant busy condition, tying up the phone line. In most cases the parents aren't aware of the the condition.
Young children also have a tendency to play with the dial on the phone and actually inadvertently and undesirable place calls including long distance telephone calls from the phone.
A number of prior patents have delt with this very problem. For example U.S. Pat. No. 4,435,623 issued Mar. 6th, 1984 to Valentine describes a telephone guard device, including sliding guard members to either side of the device to block the switch hook buttons on a phone in the down position. A somewhat similar device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,124,664 issued Mar. 10th, 1984 to Beatty, and a further device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,069,513 issued Dec. 18th, 1962 to Nimer.
The problem with the structures in the first two patents referred to above is that they require manual settings to the blocking position and if they are not manually set then they are not operative. The latter of the three patents described above to Nimer does show a structure with an automatic setting. However, not only is the Nimer structure quite cumbersome but in addition, the Nimer blocking member is biased away from a blocking position so that should his device fail or if the child tampers with the device it will automatically move away from the blocking position again rendering the Nimer structure inoperative.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,624,317 issued Nov. 30th, 1971 to Mikco Development Company Inc. and 3,723,671 issued Mar. 27th, 1973 to Edelcreek describe telephone locking devices which due to their non-retractable construction, have particular application in office environments and the like for locking of a phone against unauthorized telephone calls. However, the structures of these two patents including their key lock operations would not be acceptable for home use where they would require constant removal and replacement of the structures to the phone.